There is a mood of incredulity in the media at Gordon Ramsay's latest PR faux pas: an open letter to his mother-in-law, published in the Evening Standard. "This has to be one of the most painful letters I've ever had to write," he wrote. "Listening to Tana in floods of tears reading your letter [asking] that she stays away from her family is so awfully wrong."
Ramsay seems to be struggling with the difference between real life and reality show life – it is bizarre to see the hard man of cookery TV exposing his dirty laundry rather than his ability to spew expletives. In terms of resolving the fallout after Ramsay sacked his father-in-law as chief executive of Gordon Ramsay Holdings, his letter is akin to sending a child into the cellar with a candle to look for a gas leak. It is hard to work out what exactly he intended to achieve by writing it.
Ramsay is an emotional beast, most comfortable on TV. If he is determined to conflate real life and docu-soap opera, surely he should be doing so on TV or, better still for all concerned, in private. Ramsay's emotion and spoken communication skills are his prime weapon. Why, then, has he muzzled himself with a letter?
The answer surely lies in the way he handles all of his public life. He has gone through PRs like sous chefs, presumably because they've disagreed with him or said something he doesn't like. But if Ramsay had been prepared to listen to someone about resolving this private, family issue he would have heard an argument along these lines: an open letter is a marvellous form of protest against government or other public body decisions and is also an excellent way for someone to answer criticisms from the public. It is not, however, a good solution for someone with family issues to deal with.
He would also do well to allow himself to be reminded that there are better ways of exposing an emotional issue in the media – it has been done well many times before by many people. Ramsay should look to Princess Diana's masterful manipulation of her interview with Martin Bashir, and the way a simple line such as "Well there were three people in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded" can say so much more than a clumsily executed open letter. If his intent was to fix his wife's relationship with his mother-in-law, surely he would have been better served going about it in a more subtle manner?
This open letter is far from subtle. In PR terms, it makes the post-oil spill BP meltdown seem like a walk in the park, as it treads a minefield of family politics. OK, so it wouldn't affect the whole world, but it seems likely to me that Ramsay will drive a further wedge between his wife and her family, even as he was (presumably) trying to reconcile them.
I've been asking as many of the PR people mostly deeply schooled in the dark craft as I can find in a hurry to give me a good reason why Ramsay's done this – and few could offer an explanation. One person did come up with a gem of a quote, however: "Gordon Ramsay is to PR what Douglas Bader is to tap dancing." He is without the tact and delicacy that is required of celebrities in a 24/7 world desperate for stories and he does not recognise that a good publicist is perhaps his only hope of digging his way out of his current situation.